BULGARIA: Gold on Tobacco Road

The least-known and most loyal of Russia's
Eastern European satellites is little Bulgaria (pop. 8.5 million). TIME
Correspondent Strobe Talbott recently visited some of the country's
major urban, industrial and agricultural centers and sent this report:

On Ruski Boulevard, in the heart of the Bulgarian capital of Sofia,
looms one of the oddest monuments in the Communist world: a huge
equestrian statue of Alexander II, Czar of All the Russias from 1855 to
1881. While Moscow abounds with likenesses of Lenin and Peking with
those of Mao, Sofia has chosen to preserve an image of the Emperor who
helped liberate...